I
thanked the mother and daughter by an inclination of the head, and
hurried away; I was afraid I should break down.
"I found myself alone under my roof, and laid myself down in my
misery. My unhappy imagination suggested numberless baseless projects,
and prescribed impossible resolutions. When a man is struggling in the
wreck of his fortunes, he is not quite without resources, but I was
engulfed. Ah, my dear fellow, we are too ready to blame the wretched.
Let us be less harsh on the results of the most powerful of all social
solvents. Where poverty is absolute there exist no such things as
shame or crime, or virtue or intelligence. I knew not what to do; I
was as defenceless as a maiden on her knees before a beast of prey. A
penniless man who has no ties to bind him is master of himself at any
rate, but a luckless wretch who is in love no longer belongs to
himself, and may not take his own life. Love makes us almost sacred in
our own eyes; it is the life of another that we revere within us; then
and so it begins for us the cruelest trouble of all--the misery with a
hope in it, a hope for which we must even bear our torments. I thought
I would go to Rastignac on the morrow to confide Foedora's strange
resolution to him, and with that I slept.
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